Sleepless in the Ghost
by SweetSinger2010
Summary: There's a heat wave and nobody's sleeping. The crew starts picking on each other. Zeb, Sabine, and Ezra get kicked off the ship. Kanan and Hera don't say "I love you." Things are perfectly imperfect.


A/N: This is pure fluff, written at two in the morning. It wasn't meant to turn into Kanera, but things happen. Review if you wanna.

* * *

Sleepless in the _Ghost_

The Ghost's broken cooling system and the oppressive heat wave baking Atollon kept everyone awake long into the night. It was too hot to sleep in the cabins, closed off from any source of fresh air in the ship's interior, so they were all in the hold for the night.

Zeb stretched out on the balcony outside the turret, Kanan and Ezra were in the floor of the hold, and Hera and Sabine lay on the ship's lowered ramp. A thin and hastily assembled cloth partition separated the girls on the ramp from the boys in the main hold; everyone had stripped down to their underwear, which did not please conservative Hera at all, but it had been unavoidable.

"Why is it okay for them to walk around shirtless because it's hot outside, but you and I can't?" Sabine had asked that afternoon, seeing half-clothed Kanan and Ezra work around the ship.

"It's my experience that men tend to get distracted when women aren't wearing clothes," Hera answered, too tired to scold herself for sounding like a middle-aged old-maid.

Sabine snorted and rolled her eyes. "Oh, please." She threw Hera a sardonic look. " _You're_ distracted every time Kanan and his finely-chiseled abs walk by. Also, he's blind, remember?"

Blind, but not dead, Hera thought. An uncomfortable heat crept up her cheeks which had nothing to do with the outside temperature. To Sabine she said irritably, "Pipe down before he hears, would you? We'll compromise."

And so, they all lay in their underwear, trying to sleep. Having the ramp down did alleviate some of the heat, keeping the air in the hold from being totally stagnant, but the breeze was weak and inconsistent. Everyone was restless and nerves were fraying.

In the darkness, Hera heard nearby-Sabine turn over and push up on one elbow. She kept her eyes closed, hoping that if she looked asleep, she wouldn't have to intervene in what was about to become a quarrel.

"Please breathe louder, Ezra," Sabine said, punctuating each word with snappy articulation. "I _really love_ hearing your tonsils scrape the back of your throat."

"Shut up," he shot back, "or I'm gonna come over there and breathe right in your ear."

"If you _dare_ -"

"Play nice," Kanan warned, a firm edge in his voice.

"At least you're not roommates with 'im," Zeb said with a martyred air. "You see what I have to deal with?"

"Right." Sabine sat up with a huff. "Like you have any room to talk."

Ezra snickered and Zeb muttered, "Yeah? Well, you sleepwalk when you're stressed."

Sabine gasped. "I do not!" To Hera she whispered frantically: "Do I?"

"It's true," Kanan said.

"Name _one_ time." Sabine challenged, indignant. Ezra was all too happy to comply.

"When Kanan was captured by the Inquisitor, you walked into our room in the middle of the night with a paint gun and asked us if we wanted to help you paint a mural on the hull of the Ghost."

"What? No! Hera would kill me for that. I would _never_ -"

"We had a twenty minute conversation about it."

"You're making that up."

Kanan cleared his throat. "After Hera got shot up over Concord Dawn, I found you crying in the common room because you were convinced the medical droid was a conspirator of Fenn Rau's and would try to kill her."

Sabine gasped again. "Well, _you_ drool. I've seen you napping in that big chair in the common room and you definitely drool."

"Everyone drools," Kanan muttered.

"I don't," Hera said primly. She gave up pretending to be asleep.

"Yeah, but you talk in your sleep," he countered, "and that's worse. Do you know how annoying-"

"Hey, Kanan," Zeb interrupted. "How do _you_ know she talks in her sleep?"

A suggestive silence settled over the group and Hera flipped onto her stomach, glaring in Kanan's general direction through the divider.

"I mean, I don't _know_ , exactly," he backpedaled.

"Oh, I think he does," Sabine said smugly. "Don't you guys?"

"Oh yeah."

"Definitely."

Hera's face burned with embarrassment. "Alright, enough," she said. She sat up in a cross-legged position and gave Sabine a disapproving glance. "Clearly, no one is getting much sleep tonight and you all need something better to do." She heard the others take a collective breath, afraid she was about to start handing out chores. She grinned in spite of herself. "There's a small lake about 10 klicks south of here and plenty of moonlight to swim by. Now get off my ship."

Impulsive arms flung themselves around Hera's neck. "Thanks, mom!" Sabine teased affectionately.

"Sabine drives," Hera called as the two teens and Zeb scrambled up the ladder.

The Lasat laughed. "She'll always get to drive because _you_ crashed the-"

"Are we still on that?" Ezra demanded, piqued.

"Ezra, we're never _not_ going to be on that," Sabine said.

Hera couldn't hear what Ezra said next because-thank the Force-they were out of the hold and a peaceful quiet seeped into the room. Several moments passed and she felt a faint tremor in the ship's frame as the Ghost II pulled away. She sighed sleepily.

"Do you think they took swimming clothes with them?" Kanan asked.

"I don't care," she yawned, stretching and laying on her back. "Didn't you want to go?"

"Swimming in the dark isn't really a novelty for me," he said wryly. Hera snorted.

"You're horrible."

"And you're far away."

Hera rolled her eyes at how he managed to make that sound provocative. "You can come here; I'm not moving." She listened as he shifted across the floor, not even bothering to stand and walk, dragging his pillow behind him. He finally settled next to her, hip to hip.

"Huh-uh," she said through another yawn. "It is way too hot for this kind of proximity."

He scooted over until the only contact they had was their laced-together fingers. "Better?"

"Better." She closed her eyes and began to drift off within moments; sleep always came easier when Kanan was nearby. She suspected the same held true for him. Things were always smoother when they were together.

Except for now.

Even in her dozy state, Hera knew that Kanan was still very much awake and restless and she wasn't at all surprised when she dragged her eyelids open and found his sightless gaze fixed on her.

"What?"

He grinned. "So you get distracted by my 'finely-chiseled abs?'"

"Ugh." Hera yanked her hand from his and turned to one side, putting her back to him, completely mortified that he had heard that conversation with Sabine after all. "Kanan Jarrus, Jedi Knight," she announced flatly to the empty room. "Pride of the Jedi Order."

"The one and only." He snaked one arm around her waist and drew her to him, resting his chin on her shoulder. Hera was about eight years past resisting his touch, but she did not, this time, give him the satisfaction of a favorable response as his fingertips traced feather-soft circles on her hipbone.

"You know," she said in a mock-lecturing tone, "every time I think how proud I am of you and who you've become, you pop up with stuff like that and I get flashbacks to the twenty-three year old idiot I met on Gorse."

"You loved me back then; admit it," he said wickedly.

"Noo," she rebuffed, drawing out the word, "I love you _now_. I wanted to punch you in the teeth back then."

His hand fell still on her hip and he used it to gently turn her on her back, propping himself up on one elbow. She peered into his face and saw the humor had been replaced by something else.

"What is it?" She asked.

"You don't say that a lot," he answered thoughtfully. "Neither do I."

Her eyebrows quirked. "What, that we want to punch each other? The feeling is a lot more rare than it used to be-"

"You know what I mean, Hera," he interrupted, but not impatiently. "We've never been good with the words."

She considered that for a moment, gnawing her lip. "Does it matter?" She asked after a long pause. "I don't need to hear you tell me you love me, Kanan," she said. "I know it by the way you take my hand at the end of a long day or sit and talk through a difficult decision with me."

"I used to be able to tell by the way you looked at me," he said with a tinge of sadness.

She brushed her thumb across the burn scar on the bridge of his nose, remembering how raw the wound had once been. "And now?"

"This." He put his hand over hers, reinforcing her touch on his scarred face. "You've never shied away from the worst parts of me."

"Of course not," she said softly.

"We don't need the words; they wouldn't suffice anyway." He tenderly ran his hand down one of her lek and she shivered.

"No," she answered breathlessly, "they wouldn't." She put her hands on either side of his neck and he dipped his head, finding her mouth. Her lips opened beneath his with a contented sigh.

He pulled away ever so slightly. "I thought you said it was too hot for this kind of proximity?" There was no longer any gap between their bodies.

"Forget it," she said. Eager to kiss him, she knotted her fingers in his hair and pulled him back to her.

Then the ship's com squawked and instead of something romantic, the moment turned into Hera's worst nightmare.

" _Gods._ " Sabine's horrified voice echoed in the hold, bouncing off the walls and Hera's nerves. "Can you two please turn off the com _before_ you make out?"

Hera jerked to her feet, displacing Kanan, and ran to the com panel, slamming it with her fist. Elsewhere in the ship, she heard the distinct sound of Chopper's maniacal laugh.

"That droid has a suicidal streak," Kanan said sourly. "That's the only explanation."

Hera walked back to Kanan and plopped down on the floor in front of him. "He's not stupid enough to do it twice, though." She leaned forward and brushed her lips against his. "I believe we were right about here?"

His only response was to wrap his arms around her and softly kiss every part of her face that wasn't her mouth.

There were no more interruptions.

* * *

It was nearly dawn. Kanan and Hera lay on the ship's ramp back to back, holding hands, dead asleep.

Sabine, Zeb, and Ezra stood over them, arms folded, contemplating their next move.

Ezra spoke up. "It's kind of..." He trailed off and snapped his fingers, trying to find the right word.

"Sweet?" Sabine supplied.

"Yeah."

She tilted her head. "We should leave them alone. They look so peaceful."

Zeb flashed a toothy grin. "It'd be a real shame if someone-" He paused as he hefted a bucket onto his shoulder. "-splashed this cold lake water all over 'em."

They all shared a look-do we dare?

"Your call, Spectre Five," Ezra said.

Sabine's eyes glinted. In the end, it was an irresistible opportunity. "Get ready to run, boys."


End file.
